What are the challenges that Managers face during transition into new roles?
Businesses need a proactive strategy to support transitioning leaders in order to avert failure and create added value by increasing a new manager’s effectiveness.
What is the problem?
The scarcity of talent in the marketplace often leads to fast-tracking leaders. This is a global phenomenon; however, South Africa has legislative pressure to transform organisational leadership in a specific way. Does this result in different or additional challenges for new South African managers?
In bygone days, employees with leadership potential had the luxury of the time to develop into the organisation’s leaders. As you moved steadily up the ranks, so your job skills-set and soft skills-set were developed and honed by hands-on, real-time experience. By the time, you earned the nod and sat down in the manager’s seat, you pretty much knew what the job was all about, you understood what you were expected to do, and you had some fairly solid insights into how you could do it successfully. You could afford to have a fair measure of self-confidence and self-belief from day one.
But we are fast-tracking talent into leadership positions today, and so it is common throughout the world to get the managerial position without having the necessary managerial, leadership and even, job skills that you need to be a success in your new role. While Employment Equity legislation in South Africa creates a pressure on companies coupled with skills shortage, it creates the same pressure on global companies. They too, promote or employ under-resourced managers.
Research has shown that a high percentage of newly appointed managers find themselves in a new job and realise that they don’t have the skills and experience to perform it successfully. This is a highly stressful experience that negatively impacts on individuals in many ways, some of which can have long-lasting effects.
Dogged by fear of failure and self-doubt, frustrated by one’s own drive for perfectionism and hamstrung by a lack of self-awareness, it is not hard for a new manager to find themselves in private turmoil while they do their best to present the required image of seamless self-confidence. Researcher and co-founder of The Resilience Group, Beth Weinstock identified more of what she termed ‘hidden stressors’ of transition such as identity shifts, boundary realignments and a growing awareness of what it means to be a leader, which of course, highlights your own shortfalls.
There is a substantial body of research that identifies a variety of challenges faced by new managers during their transition into the new role. Typical challenges arise out of the process of organisational socialisation that every new employee goes through. It is common for new managers to experience difficulties while finding their way in a new organisational structure, building new relationships and alliances, as well as discovering and aligning themselves with a new organisational culture. New managers have widely reported that in their view, they started out on the job without the full information, authority, relationships, tools or plans to make them successful.
Grappling with, and feeling overwhelmed by these transitional challenges has serious impacts such as poor performance and low levels of satisfaction, as well as the lack of commitment and intent to stay. If a transition into management is not managed properly by the company, it often leads to compromised productivity, low staff morale, wasteful disruption and high turnover of staff. These are costly to the organisation.
Businesses need a proactive strategy to support transitioning leaders in order to avert failure and create added value by increasing a new manager’s effectiveness. What strategies work?